First, some data on the medicating of children:
Foster children are medicated at rates far higher than non-foster children. Much of this drug use is not justified by standard medical practice (scroll through this brief abstract, to the conclusion).
Pre-schoolers are now frequently being diagnosed with depression and bi-polar disorder.
Newer anti-depressants do not work better than the older ones (though they are far more profitable); the older ones don't work very well either. (See the second article for a good review of illegal and quasi-illegal practices Eli Lilly engaged in order to replace the profits Prozac generated for them).
Now this: Dan Carlat admits that his take on the growing scandal at Harvard Medical School was, to use a word, ingenuous. The three doctors at HMS apparently hid millions of dollars in payments from various drug companies and failed to report them as potential conflicts of interest. Carlat calls the CME (continuing medical education credits) system a huge money laundering scheme, a way of directing cash to doctors and researchers:
Rather than paying doctors directly to give accredited CME courses (which is illegal), drug companies pay third party companies to create the courses. The checks are actually written by the education company, but the ultimate source is clearly the sponsoring pharmaceutical company. The drug industry has gravitated to this form of marketing because they realize that doctors are more likely to believe information in CME courses than information from drug reps.
In summary we have a huge boom in medicating children, a huge boom in drug company profits, a vast and invisible payment system for biasing doctors and gaming the research, and all the major medical journals absolutely dependent on advertising from drug companies. And now, the most famous medical school in the world has been found to be caught up in the whole racket.
Foster children are medicated at rates far higher than non-foster children. Much of this drug use is not justified by standard medical practice (scroll through this brief abstract, to the conclusion).
Pre-schoolers are now frequently being diagnosed with depression and bi-polar disorder.
Newer anti-depressants do not work better than the older ones (though they are far more profitable); the older ones don't work very well either. (See the second article for a good review of illegal and quasi-illegal practices Eli Lilly engaged in order to replace the profits Prozac generated for them).
Now this: Dan Carlat admits that his take on the growing scandal at Harvard Medical School was, to use a word, ingenuous. The three doctors at HMS apparently hid millions of dollars in payments from various drug companies and failed to report them as potential conflicts of interest. Carlat calls the CME (continuing medical education credits) system a huge money laundering scheme, a way of directing cash to doctors and researchers:
Rather than paying doctors directly to give accredited CME courses (which is illegal), drug companies pay third party companies to create the courses. The checks are actually written by the education company, but the ultimate source is clearly the sponsoring pharmaceutical company. The drug industry has gravitated to this form of marketing because they realize that doctors are more likely to believe information in CME courses than information from drug reps.
The Harvard scandal represents the perfect storm of this money laundering operation. It appears that the vast majority of the money eventually reported by the Harvard Trio, a combined $4.2 million over 7 years, was drug company money that was laundered and processed to seem like it wasn't drug company money. And this, I suspect, is why it was so easy for the doctors to rationalize not disclosing it.
This is a major public health issue. Does it go to far to say that, for parents at the very least, this calls into question the legitimacy of the entire system of psychopharmacological research?In summary we have a huge boom in medicating children, a huge boom in drug company profits, a vast and invisible payment system for biasing doctors and gaming the research, and all the major medical journals absolutely dependent on advertising from drug companies. And now, the most famous medical school in the world has been found to be caught up in the whole racket.
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